Islamic Blog dealing with religious and worldly issues faced by the Muslims.

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Monday, 6 June 2016

Obeying Allah vs Following Allah

There is difference between obeying (ata,at) and following (itb,a).
Obeying is related to commandment; whereas following is related to every
act/saying whether commanded or not. We are under obligation to obey Allah; we are
not under obligation to follow Allah. The reason is simple; we do not have
capability to follow Allah, and we are not required to follow Allah. Allah is
owner of life and death and everything; we as humans cannot be owner of
everything. Allah is limitless in His every Quality; but we cannot. Allah is
owner of ‘Day of Judgment’; but we cannot. Allah is Creator and Sustainer of
this universe; but we cannot. Allah is ‘samad’/ Self Sufficient; but we cannot.
There is no equivalent to Allah; but we have so many equivalents. It is true
Allah commands us to follow His some Qualities and Acts; but following such Qualities
and Acts of Allah is called obedience to Allah because Allah has commanded us
to follow those His Qualities and Acts, and secondly following any such Quality
of Allah is subject to obedience to Allah; in other words, we should not follow
any such Quality of Allah to the extent where we should fail to obey Allah. The
reason is simple; primarily, we have been created to worship/obey Allah, NOT to
imitate Allah.

It may be appreciated Deen cannot be practiced in its
true spirit without keeping in view the difference between obeying Allah and
following Allah. Allah’s Mercy is
limitless but we have been ordered to do ‘qattal’, if required, in certain
situations for certain objectives. We are not to follow Allah’s Quality i.e.
Mercy to the extent where it may become a hurdle in the way of obedience to
Allah regarding ‘qattal’. Similarly Allah is the most Benevolent but we are
ordered to enforce Islam over all other non-Islamic systems no matters how much
it angers non-Muslims; we are not to follow Allah’s Quality ofBenevolence to the extent it becomes a hurdle
to enforce Islam over non-Islamic systems. Similarly Allah is free from all
needs and worries, but we are ordered to fulfill needs of others.Allah is the most Loving, but we are ordered
to be strict and indiscriminately in enforcing laws contained in Deen; we
should not make our love a hurdle in the way of enforcement of laws.Similarly Allah is One but we are not to
pursue oneness to the extent where difference between ‘Hizb ul Shaitan’ and ‘Hizb
ul lah’ is blurred, and where difference between the Creator and the creation
is blurred. In short, we are under no obligation to follow Allah’s Qualities; we
are under compulsion only to obey Allah. Even in cases in which a few Qualities
of Allah are to be followed, they are to be followed only to the extent where
obedience to Allah is not hampered.

When any group of Muslims ignores the difference
between obeying Allah and following Allah, they allow non-Islamic ideas and
practices to creep into Islam. One example is un-Islamic practices and ideas
penetrated into body of Islamic mysticism. In the Sub-continent negative
implication of ignoring the difference between obeying and following Allah has
been manifested in the form of Bhakti Cult adopted as one shade in Islamic
mysticism. Bhakti Cult preached ‘Unity of God’; that all religions preach for
the same God, no matter if methods are different. It was a methodology to attain salvation through ‘sheer
love to God’ without pursuing any specific form of worship. Because Islam also
gives importance to love for Allah, some Muslim mystics in India, being
influenced by Bhakti preachers, made ‘love for Allah’ as a tool to follow Allah’s Qualities to such
an extent where difference between obeying Allah and following Allah was
ignored. As a result, the movement for Unity of Religions got impetus in Muslim
India. This movement generated a real threat to Muslims’ identity which Shaikh
Ahmad (r.a) stood for.

Ignoring difference between obeying Allah and
following Allah impacted Muslims’ mysticism in similar manner in the whole
Muslim world, and this distorted Muslims’ mysticism became one of the major
causes of Muslims’ downfall. When following
Allah’s Qualities became sign of religious devotion for Muslims, they started
ignoring obedience to Allah. Actually it is obedience to Allah which formulates
collective social laws leading to rise of a nation; whereas following Allah
aims at individual purification by developing Allah’s Qualities in individual. We
have already seen in http://secondriseofislam.blogspot.com/2016/02/individual-reformation-vs-collective.html
that rise and fall of a nation is related to collective deeds of the nation, not
to individual deeds. Therefore when Muslims started giving higher priority to
following Allah and ignoring obedience to Allah, the process of downfall of
Muslims started. It may be appreciated that Islam is not a religion; it is a
Deen. As a Deen, in Islam, the way to individual purification and spiritual
elevation goes through obedience to Allah; it does not pass through following/developing
Allah’s Qualities in the individual as is the way found in religions.

In the present age too, some scholars undermine obedience to Allah by
declaring that spiritual transaction/ Eman is something to be judged by Allah
only; it cannot be judged on the parameter of obedience to Allah. Such so
called enlightened scholars though do not believe in giving higher priority to
following Allah but they undermine importance of obedience to Allah as much as
the people believing in following Allah do. In Islam Eman depends upon
obedience to Allah, and it increases or decreases with the increase or decrease
in obedience to Allah respectively.

Some people (e.g. qadyanis whose prophet used abusive language in his books) believe in rightness of using abusive
language against certain persons; they contend because Allah has used stiff
language in Quran for certain people, they are also right in using abusive
language. Such people also need to differentiate between following Allah and
obeying Allah (it need not emphasize that obedience to Allah is following our Nabi (s.a.w.w); for details plz see https://secondriseofislam.blogspot.com/2012/01/concept-of-fee-sabilillah-in-allahs-way.html). Surely Allah has cursed some non-Muslims in Quran but it does not mean we should start cursing other non-Muslims or Muslims which we think deserve to be cursed. We cannot follow Allah; we can
only obey Allah.